After yesterday’s slightly less than stellar news, I was thrilled to see that the woman who is currently in the DRC to pick up her daughter went to the orphanage and took over 200 pictures of the kids and posted them for the families in our agency to see.
Up until now, we’ve had only one good picture, and the kids were not smiling. The others were such poor resolution, it was hard to discern their facial characteristics.
These pictures are FANTASTIC.
There are over 100 children at the orphanage, with 15 “mamas” taking care of them. In the sea of children’s faces, we quickly recognized Rose. She worked her way into more than a dozen photos, with several of just her. In every picture she has a different expression, as opposed to the somber-robot look she has displayed in all of the photos we’ve had up until now. She has the sweetest dimple on her left cheek, and what appears to be a significant amount of sass. Ken and I got to laughing because the more we looked at the pictures, the more we realized that she had snuck into so many pictures. She’s frequently in the background, and in one picture of children sitting at a table eating lunch, you can see her eyes just peeking from behind the shoulders of the other children. She’s our little “Where’s Waldo!”
Emmanuel was a bit harder to find. We haven’t received as many pictures of him, and after studying the ONE good picture of him that we have, and the photos online, we think we have figured it out. One of the reasons it’s been so hard to figure out who he is is because he’s smiling! He’s joking with friends, laughing, and even casting glances at his sister who indeed, worked her way into the “boys only” photos. He has the cutest button nose, and has already lost a tooth.
All in all, there are about 2 dozen new pictures of our kids. We’re not allowed to post pictures online for security and privacy reasons, but I can show them to people in person. It has been so good to see our kids with different expressions, having fun, and being well cared for!
Where in the World Are Our Kids? 
This gives me goose bumps!
Please say you will bring them to church for us to see!!!!!
They’ll be loaded on my ipod!
Omgosh, Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!!!!!!!
Yay!!!!! Add me to the list of those who want to see your beautiful children!
We are waiting for our referral now of 2 little ones. It makes me feel somehow connected to read other peoples stories and see their pictures. The kids are beautiful and have such amazing strength considering what they hace gone through in their short lives. Good luck to you for the rest of this journey. I’d love to see pictures. We don’t know which orphanages our agency works with so we don’t have an idea of whether we are waiting and praying for our 2 new daughters or our new daughter and son. We’ll see.
Congratulations on being part of your own adoption journey! For security reasons, and because they are technically not our children until the appeal period is over, we cannot show pictures. The children’s safety is our primary concern, so we won’t show pictures online until they are home in the United States.